Our washer fills, spins, and rinses properly. However during the agitation cycle, the agitator, moves and stops in rapid succession. When the agitator stops there is a ratcheting sound for maybe five clicks, instead of a reverse motion.

The final result is the cloths and water moving in only a counter-clockwise direction during the agitation cycle and getting tightly wrapped around the agitator.

Rather rare, but your agitator stripped out. Remove the 7/16 bolt under the cap and pull off to check the splindle . If ok, you just might have a bad transmission.
If ok, your transmission coupler broke while agitating and now it will not spin either.

Thanks for your reply! I have torn it all down. The spindle itself and the grooves in the plastic part of the agitator that it mates with are both in good condition.

Saturday I even went so far as to open the gearbox and fish out all the gears looking for a gear missing some teeth or maybe one of the parts somehow obviously broken... no luck. The only thing I couldn't do, because of the complete mess it would have been, was check out that worm gear. However I suspect it is fine because spin continues to work well.

Could worn brakes or clutch be the culprit? They both seem to work well enough when I have the thing torn apart, but perhaps under load they fail...

I'm puzzled. I'd buy a new gearbox in a second if I could somehow be sure that was the problem... just not sure at this point... any other thoughts?

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